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Perhaps the reason this continuous activity remains
unperceived is that it has no touch whatever with things of
sense. No doubt action upon material things, or action dictated
by them, must proceed through the sensitive faculty which exists
for that use: but why should there not be an immediate activity
of the Intellectual-Principle and of the soul that attends it,
the soul that antedates sensation or any perception? For, if
Intellection and Authentic-Existence are identical, this
"Earlier-than-perception" must be a thing having Act.
Let us explain the conditions under which we become conscious of
this Intellective-Act.
When the Intellect is in upward orientation that [lower part of
it] which contains [or, corresponds to] the life of the Soul, is,
so to speak, flung down again and becomes like the reflection
resting on the smooth and shining surface of a mirror; in this
illustration, when the mirror is in place the image appears but,
though the mirror be absent or out of gear, all that would have
acted and produced an image still exists; so in the case of the
Soul; when there is peace in that within us which is capable of
reflecting the images of the Rational and Intellectual-Principles
these images appear. Then, side by side with the primal knowledge
of the activity of the Rational and the Intellectual-Principles,
we have also as it were a sense-perception of their operation.
When, on the contrary, the mirror within is shattered through
some disturbance of the harmony of the body, Reason and the
Intellectual-Principle act unpictured: Intellection is unattended
by imagination.
In sum we may safely gather that while the Intellective-Act may
be attended by the Imaging Principle, it is not to be confounded
with it.
And even in our conscious life we can point to many noble
activities, of mind and of hand alike, which at the time in no
way compel our consciousness. A reader will often be quite
unconscious when he is most intent: in a feat of courage there
can be no sense either of the brave action or of the fact that
all that is done conforms to the rules of courage. And so in
cases beyond number.
So that it would even seem that consciousness tends to blunt the
activities upon which it is exercised, and that in the degree in
which these pass unobserved they are purer and have more effect,
more vitality, and that, consequently, the Sage arrived at this
state has the truer fulness of life, life not spilled out in
sensation but gathered closely within itself.
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